Plan may mean more funds for villages

Villages in Herkimer County aren’t getting their fair share of state revenues, and they haven’t been for quite some time.

David Robinson

Villages in Herkimer County aren’t getting their fair share of state revenues, and they haven’t been for quite some time.

In an effort to remedy the situation that spreads across New York, State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli released a report on Feb. 20 titled, “21st Century State Aid Formulas: Revenue Sharing,” which may be the beginning of the end for inequity in the allocation of funds.

Village of Mohawk Mayor Irene Sweet said a proposal that increases state aid is more than welcomed. “It would have a big impact on our budget and in keeping up with our services to the community.”

Sweet said it’s difficult for villages to keep up with all of the changes in the economy.

The report has a multitude of issues it deals with, but one thing really stands out — changes have been a long time coming.

Ever since the state’s fiscal crisis in the early 1990s, and a major cut to the once-reliable local aid, increases have primarily gone to cities. This practice of routing money to cities went unchecked until 2005 when the Aid and Incentives for Municipalities program began to address the problem, according to the report.

By 2007-08, under AIM a specific fiscal criteria for fiscal stress had been adopted, consisting of four points: Full valuation of taxable real property per capita less than 50 percent of the statewide average; more than 60 percent of the constitutional property tax limit exhausted; population loss greater than 10 percent since 1970; poverty rate greater than 150 percent of the statewide average.

Even with AIM, the current revenue sharing program, bringing more aid to villages and towns that qualified, the office of DiNapoli still reported it to be flawed because of a continuing reliance on outdated municipal classifications.

One of the solutions the report proposed, Method II, is to analyze the average increases in revenue sharing from State Fiscal Years 1995-96 through 2005-06 for cities that fall into the new smaller urban-center classification and provide comparable increases to villages with similarities.

The other solution, Method I, is used as a hypothetical in the report and is dismissed as unaffordable.

Being more feasible, the Method II technique for sharing the wealth provides projections for increases to villages.

All of the qualifying villages in Herkimer County would experience 61.9 percent change from current AIM program revenues. The changes in the villages funds are as follows: Ilion, $103,973; Herkimer, $84,189; Mohawk, $41,799; Frankfort, $32,314; and Dolgeville, $12,768, according to the report.

Village of Dolgeville Mayor Bruce Lyon, said fairness is the main issue with these types of proposals. If the Method II numbers are obtainable, Lyon added, “That’s a wonderful idea.”

After years of collecting cobwebs in a dark crevice of the economic agenda, the issue of revenue sharing has been rediscovered and given the proper attention.

Lyon said an old saying summed it up, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it, but if it is, than fix it.”